They had played a Scharnhorst campaign previously and the battle produced was nicely unbalanced with the French being outnumbered but the chance of reinforcements later in the game. Enough of the details.
If you are interested, you can watch the campaign section of the game on Youtube at The scharnhorst video.
The game itself can be seen at The Blucher game video
The event was organised by Kurtus Brown who is working hard to promote online wargaming and had also organised the face book pages dedicated to it the tabletop commanders.
The FB address is Tabletop Commander FB
So respect to him and the guys involved. The genre has a great future specially with isolated players.
Now on to the meat of this post that I took from previous playing of Blucher and watching last nights play and that is the question " Is Blucher really a multiplayer game."
Before watching the game I had a nagging feeling, accumulated during my own groups games, that Blucher as a multi player really doesn't work. Because of the linear style of spending an unknown quantity of momentum points the game changes from multi player to a committee of guys running the side and discussing how to spend the points and in which order or one guy deciding while the others watch. Either way I don't see enough involvement of each individual to maintain the intensity of play that a multicorps,fast play system provides normally. What effectively happens in my group and indeed in last nights game is individuals get involved in "other stuff" or lose concentration which effectively slows down the game.. I'm sure folks will have a different view on this and I would love to hear from them in comments.
In recent months I have become convinced that Blucher is not a great multiplayer game on one table. Now I have no intention of abandoning the game because it is almost perfect for fast play multicorps so what is the alternative..
First thought was to use a larger table split into two halves with players having command of the halves each with their own momentum points rather than specific corps. This works but corps get split and they play at different rates, which on a single table breaks up play.
My current thoughts which we have tried once so far is to play on separate tables which are connected by roads at known march rates. 6 turns 10 turns etc etc. each table is a seperate command . We ignore different rates of play which introduces time variants that also adds interest. You can see a report on this event at http://flownlegions.blogspot.com.es/2016/02/da-nubes-did-well.html. Each table has it's momentum based on points on table and the seniority of the commanders who have corps abilities and army commander abilities. The job of the CiC is to be on the table where he is most needed and to make strategic decisions as to which corps are needed on each table and order transfers where necassary.
The multi-table method of course requires a lot of space but the results are extremely rewarding. It feels like my idea of a Napoleonic campaign, there is a high level of involvement for all of the players. It does however require major objectives on each table to discourage massing of corps on one table. the CiC provides the GM with a march route and order for each corps some tables taking longer to reach than others. All in all very satisfying. We have another experimental 14 corps game over 3 tables in Montmelo on 12th June to take the ideas further. I will of course post results here, hopefully with more detail than our first effort.
On a different note I used the time I spent watching the game to paint some reinforcements for my Austrian corps . All infantry elements some of which contain mounted officers :-
These white coats look so much better since I began to use a paint pen to outline the strapping.
All in all a most productive night. Remember folks this is meant as a discussion post so feel free to join in.
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